1 . ADHD, short for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a disease. Alex hated these four letters. It felt like a huge ________ stuck straight on his forehead, like the only thing that ________ him. Yet wonders come in moments.

The family didn't ________ they would return from a holiday to the UK with a puppy (小狗). In a Greece restaurant on the beach, Alex took a sausage, held it under the table and made a gentle ________ noise with his tongue, hoping to ________ the puppy’s attention. It turned its head around and immediately ________ the tasty sausage in his hand. ________ and nervously, the puppy ________ him. Once under the table, it gently ________ and grabbed the sausage.As soon as it was ________ in its mouth, it seemed to disappear down the puppy's throat in two seconds flat! The puppy then licked (舔) Alex 's fingers. Alex enjoyed the moment.

“We’ll look after her,won’t we, Mum, Dad?” Alex asked. Mom knew this little dog had made its way into Alex’s ________. But how on earth could they take it back to England? And with so many ________ back in England full of wonderful dogs needing homes, were they even ________ in taking a dog from abroad? Anyway, she decided to give it a try.

After many ________, Mum said in a low voice, “Well, Alex, we gave it our best.” Alex’s eyes welled up,expecting the ________ news. “But it paid off!”, she smiled. “Puppy is coming home!” Alex screamed, jumping up and down. “I told you, my boy, ”said Mum, “wonders can happen, even for a little dog. So it is with you.”

2 . Looking back, the memory of doctors, nurses and the conclusion of appendicitis (阑尾炎) was still clear. ______, nothing hurt more than three days with appendicitis. After a series of emergencies, I could merely lie ______ and beg my body to stop hurting.

All the ______ acquired from years of swimming was eaten away. Previously, I could swim miles daily. Now it was a(n) ______ to sit up and I couldn’t swim for almost three months.

When I finally returned to the pool, I struggled with my ______ ability. Race after race, I ______ my goals. Every time I ______ to enter the national competitions, I failed by a tiny amount.

Finally, I came to the last event that could ______ me for nationals. This was my last ______ : now or never. After so many failures, I couldn’t help being furious about recent events.

The race started, and I dived in, throwing the pain, ______ and anger I had experienced recently into the pool. My mind focused, self-limitation was ______ and I devoted all my attention and strength to my moves.

When I saw my time, a wave of ______ swept over me. I eventually ______ self-doubt and won what almost ______ from me. Nationals were waiting for me, and by no means would I let anything ______ my advancement.

3 . Griffith was driving alone to the Bay Area on a work call Saturday morning, thinking he was having a heart attack. He was in ________. He was in the fast lane (车道) and he started to work his way over to the ________ lane. He drove his car at such a high speed that his car crashed off the exit ramp (匝道) and hit a big tree. All the while everything became ________ before his eyes.

A young man and woman ________. They left their car and ________ to Griffith’s car. They knew ________ what to do. They didn’t ________ Griffith from the car but instead left him where he was and got right to work, doing what they could.

“They kept_________ to keep me awake because I was not doing well,” recalled Griffith.

________ under pressure, they called the ambulance and took care of everything until professional _______ got there.

They found Griffith’s wallet and ID in the car and _______ them to the rescuers. They even _______ to find Griffith’s telephone list and _______ his family of what was happening in no time.

Griffith now knows a rare nerve impingement (神经压迫症) in his neck is what _______ him to black out. He left the hospital a week later. He said he was lucky to be alive, owing _______ to the helpful couple and other rescuers.

4 . Each year, I write a Christmas list for my family. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the ________ of a perfectly chosen gift that I would never have thought to ________. It’s just that, more often than not, someone else’s ________ of the perfectly chosen gift is not mine. I’d rather they just stuck to the ________. However, there is one area where I ________ hand over control—the Christmas stocking.

My mum makes a stocking for me every year. There are ________ to the stocking. It will always _________ chocolate coins and a pair of gloves. There will be some sort of seasonal ________, like colourful lights. And then there will be ________ supplies. We’ll buy each other little bits of skin care, such as soaps. There will be kitchen tools to replace the old ones. We use stockings as a chance to ________ each other’s daily lives, to replace the small things that you ________ because there’s always something more important to spend the money on.

These oversized socks packed with small gifts might not be ________ in fancy ribbon (丝带) and placed under the tree, but to me they bring as much ________ as the most expensive present. They_________ that the person who filled that stocking understands your life, sees the details of it, and wants to make it easier.

Buying a woman a beautiful piece of jewellery that absolutely meets her taste isn’t easy, but finding ten small items that will _________ her daily life is an act that requires truly seeing her.

6 . Ever since we were together, my wife has known about a magical place called Lincoln City, a modest beach town on the central-Oregon ______. But for me, it holds a Shangri-La-like myth. Lincoln City is where I spent one ______ week each year as a boy, ______ the rough beaches for beautiful pebbles, fishing off the local pier, and ______ matches outside my aunt’s beach house. These are ______ my happiest childhood memories.

So it was with great ______ that, not long after marrying, I took my wife to visit the “Best Place” in the world. For me, it was every bit as ______ as I remember. For her, no so much. She couldn’t ______ the fishy smell as well as the chilly wind. Ever since, she has considered Lincoln City my unexplainable ______ with no basis in reality.

In most cases, our assessments of a place or experience seldom differ. In this case, our wildly ______ perceptions of Lincoln City can be ______ by one of the strangest and most powerful feelings that humans ______: nostalgia (怀旧). Psychologists have-defined nostalgia as a, self-conscious, ______ but dominantly positive- experience, a defense response to unhappiness and a relief from a negative mood. Maybe that is why on a windy ______ day, the kind that would normally make me ______, a fishy smell will bring me the mixed feelings that my wife couldn’t share.

8 . Family quest brings joy and tears

Li Yong reunites with his family in Liyang, Jiangsu, on Dec 31, 2023.

When Li Yong took the train to the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, more than 1,500 kilometers away from his hometown — Liyang, Jiangsu province, he was just 2 years old. He was among about 3,000 children from the southern China, who were adopted by herdsmen in the late 1950s, when the country was _________ by natural disasters and the government of Inner Mongolia took the initiative to take care of these children.

Over the past six _________, these adoptees learned to adjust to their new environment and families, but they haven’t stopped digging into their past and exploring their _________. Li _________ learned that he was adopted when chatting with villagers. After his foster parents (养父母) passed away, Li _________ the idea of looking for his biological mother. _________, it was not easy for him as he didn’t know his biological family or even his birthplace.

Although _________, the journey for some has been realized _________ the application of the DNA technology. The _________ point came in 2021, when Li’s daughter told him that the Ministry of Public Security was helping people find their parents through DNA comparison with the __________ of a national DNA database. After having a blood sample taken at the local police station, Li waited for two years. Late last year, he got __________ that his mother had been found.

On Dec 31, Li finally reunited with his mother, 97-year-old Shi Bamei, in a village in Liyang. Bursting into tears of __________, Li hugged his mother, who kept __________ for the long separation. At Shi’s home, Li served his mother a spoonful of tangyuan, a sweet dumpling symbolizing reunion, on Dec 31.

“With the support and cooperation between the police and __________ groups, I believe there will be more good news for people with long-lost relatives. There will be new reunions and new __________,” he says.

9 . A 40-year-old man in China found his calling — teaching quantum mechanics (量子力学) on social media — after being unemployed for more than 20 years. Li Wei, from Qinghai province in northwestern China, became ________ for teaching science in an easy-to-understand way on his Douyin account.

Such is his popularity, he has ________ 1.8 million followers. “I don’t like ________ people,” Li said. He ________ a bachelor’s degree in law 20 years ago, but he did not find ________ in that field because of his personality. “I suffered a great failure,” he said. The turning point in his ________ came two years ago when he ________ his friend in the photovoltaic (光伏电池的) business and was ________ to find that lots of people have no knowledge of the technology.

Photovoltaic ________ a special electrical system that produces energy from a ________ and inexhaustible source, usually the sun. With a strong ________ to help people understand, Li came up with the idea of creating clips to teach science using simple everyday words ________ of terms. As he created more teaching videos, he began to realize he was good at it and ________ his subjects to include quantum mechanics and life sciences. Despite experiencing a series of failures, he finally found his ________. It’s never too ________ to do what we enjoy.